subject: Ian Miller - Creator of Nightmarish Art [print this page] Ian Miller - Creator of Nightmarish Art Ian Miller - Creator of Nightmarish Art
Born in 1946, English fantasy illustrator Ian Miller is most famous for his macabre sensibility and gothic quirkily-etched style, and noted for his interior illustrations, magazine and book covers. Raised predominantly in Manchester and London, Miller's mother, who encouraged her son's artistic talent, was a theatrical milliner for one of the filmmaking industry's leading costumiers, which, with movie theatre, were his early inspirations.
As a kid Ian experimented with poster paints and colour pencils creating illustrations of Ancient Egyptians. Miller refers to this stage as his Ancient Egyptian Phase' that was replaced later followed later by an obsession for Indians and cowboys. In the Scottish town of Invernesshire Ian Miller attended the Mortbane Academy for Boys at the age of nine. The artist remembers frequent painting expeditions to the town's surrounding countryside.
At Northwich School of Art, Miller enrolled between 1963 and 1967, prior to embarking upon a degree at London's St. Martin's School of Art where he started with sculpturing before switching to art painting. In 1970 he graduated with ease and after his work being a professional illustrator in London began.
Miller is famed for his artwork for the Fighting Fantasy game books, creating covers for the series' early titles. He has made contributions to the by Games Workshop-published fantasy gaming periodical, White Dwarfin magazine as well. During the next decades Miller continued providing farther illustrations for gaming magazines published by other firms.
The artistic style of Ian Miller has been variously described as gothic, surrealist art, grotesque, macabre and nightmarish. Throughout his career he has been experimenting with different media, but preferred making use of charcoal, pencils, watercolour and technical pens. He occasionally combines photography and collage into his artwork as well. To his range of tools an Apple Macintosh computer was recently added.
